Continuing with the theme of random things, we then asked the children to select and draw two random things from this list of random categories:

Something light

Something heavy

Something spiky

Something round

Something that needs to be plugged in

The children then had to find a way to link those two things in a story/comic. Should they combine the two objects to create an interesting character? Or should the story revolve around those two objects? Or should one object be the character and the other a tool?

Younger kids, or people of any age who just don’t feel very confident in their drawing abilities, can often really respond to having a nice clear, simple step-by-step Here’s How To Draw A Thing guide to follow along to. So with that in mind: here is one! Let’s all have a go at drawing some Dinosaur Unicorns!

We might do some more of these? If anyone has any requests for anything specific they’d like to learn how to draw, just let us know – leave a comment here, or give us a shout on twitter!

If you’re running a group using comics with kids, a great way to find good new comics for them to read – and to get them actively engaged with thinking and talking about those comics critically – is to get involved with one of the comics awards programmes that involve young people in their judging process. There are couple of these in the UK that you might want to check out, for instance…

The Excelsior Award

The Excelsior Award is the only nationwide book award for graphic novels and manga – where kids aged 11-16 decide the winner by rating each book as they read it! Eight graphic novels are selected for the shortlist and it now attracts over two hundred and fifty schools and public libraries from all over the UK and Ireland! The overall goal of this scheme is to encourage reading amongst teenagers. However, its secondary target is to raise the profile of graphic novels and manga amongst school librarians and teachers. This storytelling medium has been a largely underused resource within education for many years. The Excelsior Award attempts to highlight some of the amazing books that are out there – books that fully deserve to be in our school libraries alongside regular fiction!

We add one copy of your comic to the Comic Swap library at Seven Stories.

We shuffle the comics sent to us by the groups taking part in the swap.

You wait excitedly by the letterbox to receive 5 comics made by other comic swap groups.

You read your new comics!

The closing date for emailed permission forms is Friday 7th April 2017.
The closing date for posted comics to arrive at Seven Stories is Friday 14th April 2017.
Swapped comics will be posted out in May 2017.

Each comics swap group must be formed of multiple children and at least one responsible adult. Please do not send us any money: your group pays postage costs to send your comics to us, then we pay the postage to send you 5 new comics made by other groups.